Ice

Glass

 I had been hanging on hoping that I might get another chance to take the boat out one last weekend. (two weeks ago now) I was stymied by low water, ice, and a potential trip to the Wulik River. A couple of guys had been planning on taking snowmachines across the tundra and creeks about 50 miles to the Wulik to load up on trout. Unfortunately the trip didn't happen, but I am not ruling out a winter, or springtime trip.

 
I Need A Skate Sharpener (can actually go fast across this though)

The first day I went ice fishing was the 8th. We are finally able to drive the honda's across. Caleb, Zachary, and I headed to the slough with visions of catching sackfuls of trout with rod and reel. It wasn't happening though. There was very little open water and all of it shallow. We tried chumming the shallow water, but nothing much showed up. We went out onto the ice, and used our casting rods to jig. I caught one whitefish.

 Scared of the Vacuum

I used one of my valuable Saturdays to go exploring on the lakes behind town. Scoping out muskrat dens and runs for the quickly approaching trapping season. I fear that the ice will be too thick again. I might be able to put a couple traps out for rats though. I put on my ice skates and just cruised. It was awesome fresh black ice, smooth as butter.

Honda Rides

I did a little work on our Suzuki finally. I thought that the carbs were gummed up causing it to rev really high as soon as it warmed up. I took the carb out and apart and gave it a thorough cleaning but that didn't fix it. Turns out it was a combination of a bad spark plug, idle screw all the way out, and the throttle cable loose at the throttle. I put in a new plug, tightened up the throttle cable, and adjusted the idle screw. She runs like a top now. (knock on wood)

Dolly and A Whitefish

This past Saturday Caleb and I headed out to try our hand at ice fishing. It took us all morning to find a spot with enough ice to fish. The river jammed up from the ice, and the water backed up causing all of the good ice to break loose from shore. There was good ice in the middle of the sloughs, but there was ten feet of water all around the edges. We finally found a marginally fishable spot. The current was really ripping through which made it extremely hard to chum. I managed one small trout and a couple whitefish. Fried them up and ate them for dinner.

 Throwing Frozen Fish Back in the Hole

Tonight I went out by the pit with Oren. There were a bunch of people fishing there. Oren had a blast picking up grayling and whitefish that people had left on the ice and throwing them back in the holes. I caught a big whitefish and a decent trout. Oren stepped in a hole so we had to call it a night. He didn't want to leave even though his foot was soaked.

Oren's Handiwork

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